Identification of Adamkiewicz artery by 4D flow MRI and intra-arterial ultra-high-resolution CT angiography in preoperative assessment of patients with chronic aortic dissection: A case report.

Preoperative identification of the Adamkiewicz artery (AKA) with adequate reconstruction or preservation during surgery is useful for protecting the spinal cord from ischemia during thoracoabdominal aortic repair. However, the identification of the AKA remains challenging in some cases, especially with chronic aortic dissection. In a 45-year-old man with chronic aortic dissection requiring thoracoabdominal aortic repair, conventional contrast-enhanced CT or MR angiography failed to detect AKA due to the large entry tear and an enlarged false lumen.

Prevention of chronic pneumonia in children with severe motor and intellectual disabilities by long-term tobramycin inhalation: Its benefits and limitations.

Aim: To determine the effect of long-term tobramycin (TOB) inhalation therapy on recurrent pneumonia among ventilator-dependent children with profound neurological disabilities.

Methods: TOB inhalation was performed in eight series of trials in seven ventilator-dependent children who had intratracheal Pseudomonas aeruginosa and suffered from recurrent pneumonia. Their age at the initiation of therapy was 68 ± 50 months (mean ± standard deviation), whereas the duration of treatment was 30 ± 22 months.

Laminar chaotic saddle within a turbulent attractor.

Intermittent switchings between weakly chaotic (laminar) and strongly chaotic (bursty) states are often observed in systems with high-dimensional chaotic attractors, such as fluid turbulence. They differ from the intermittency of a low-dimensional system accompanied by the stability change of a fixed point or a periodic orbit in that the intermittency of a high-dimensional system tends to appear in a wide range of parameters. This paper considers a case where the skeleton of a laminar state L exists as a proper chaotic subset S of a chaotic attractor X, that is, S⊊X.

Predictive brain activity related to auditory information is associated with performance in speech comprehension tasks in noisy environments.

Introduction: Understanding speech in noisy environments is challenging even for individuals with normal hearing, and it poses a significant challenge for those with hearing impairments or listening difficulties. There are limitations associated with the current methods of evaluating speech comprehension in such environments, especially in individuals with peripheral hearing impairments. According to the predictive coding model, speech comprehension is an active inference process that integrates sensory information through the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processing.

Smoking Cessation and the Odds of Developing Hypertension in a Working-Age Male Population: The Impact of Body Weight Changes.

Background: Smoking elevates blood pressure (BP) whereas smoking cessation increases body weight (BW), which predisposes new quitters to the development of hypertension. This study aimed to investigate the effect of smoking cessation and subsequent BW change on the odds of developing hypertension.

Methods: A total of 10,354 Japanese male workers (mean age, 38.

Artificial Intelligence-Based Surgery Support Model Using Intraoperative Radiographs for Assessing the Acetabular Component Angle.

Background: This study aimed to develop an artificial intelligence-based surgical support model for assessing the acetabular component angle using intraoperative radiographs during total hip arthroplasty and verify its accuracy.

Methods: A total of 268 hips were analyzed. At first, 268 preoperative and intraoperative anteroposterior pelvic radiographs were amplified to 536.

Structural reconstruction of mouse acute aortic dissection by intravenously administered human Muse cells without immunosuppression.

Background: Stanford type B-acute aortic dissection (type B-AAD) is often life-threatening without invasive surgery. Multilineage-differentiating stress enduring cell (Muse cells), which comprise several percent of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), are endogenous pluripotent-like stem cells that selectively home to damaged tissue and replace damaged/apoptotic cells by in-vivo differentiation.

Methods: Mortality, aortic diameter expansion, cell localization, cell differentiation, and inflammation of the dissected aorta were evaluated in type B-AAD model mice intravenously injected with human-Muse cells, -elastin-knockdown (KD)-Muse cells, -human leukocyte antigen-G (HLA-G)-KD-Muse cells, or MSCs, all without immunosuppressant.

Pioglitazone treatment mitigates cardiovascular bioprosthetic degeneration in a chronic kidney disease model.

Aims: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular diseases, e.g., atherosclerosis and calcific aortic valve disease, leading inevitably to valve replacement surgery.

Minimally invasive cardiac surgeries in 2021: annual report by Japanese society of minimally invasive cardiac surgery.

Purpose: Although minimally invasive cardiac surgery (MICS) procedures are widely performed throughout Japan, nationwide data regarding treated cases are limited. Up-to-date results for cardiovascular surgery are vital for quality control in clinical practice. Presented here is the 2021 annual report based on data from the Japan Cardiovascular Surgery Database (JCVSD).

[Precautions for Coronary Artery Reconstruction in Aortic Root Replacement].

Aortic root replacement is based on the Bentall procedure, and if appropriate cases are selected, valve-sparing surgery has good results. However, peri-operative myocardial infarction has been reported as a serious morbidity, and coronary artery reconstruction must be performed preventing this complication. Our results also indicate that prevention of kinking of the right coronary artery was associated with an improved prognosis.

New rat model of spinal cord infarction with long-lasting functional disabilities generated by intraspinal injection of endothelin-1.

Background: The current method for generating an animal model of spinal cord (SC) infarction is highly invasive and permits only short-term observation, typically limited to 28 days.

Objective: We aimed to establish a rat model characterised by long-term survival and enduring SC dysfunction by inducing selective ischaemic SC damage.

Methods: In 8-week-old male Wistar rats, a convection-enhanced delivery technique was applied to selectively deliver endothelin-1 (ET-1) to the anterior horn of the SC at the Th13 level, leading to SC infarction.

Two-Year Clinical Outcome of MitraClip Transcatheter Edge-to-Edge Repair From the J-MITRA Registry Data.

Background: The introduction of transcatheter edge-to-edge repair for moderate-to-severe or severe mitral regurgitation (MR) utilizing the MitraClip system became reimbursed and clinically accessible in Japan in April 2018. This study presents the 2-year clinical outcomes of all consecutively treated patients who underwent MitraClip implantation in Japan and were prospectively enrolled in the Japanese Circulation Society-oriented J-MITRA registry.

Methods and results: Analysis encompassed 2,739 consecutive patients enrolled in the J-MITRA registry with informed consent (mean age: 78.

Intima-Media Thickness in the Carotid Bifurcation is Related to Silent Brain Infarction: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Aims: Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) measurement is used to assess subclinical atherosclerosis. We aimed to examine the association between the maximum IMT by location and the occurrence of silent brain infarction (SBI).

Methods: Overall, 280 Japanese individuals (92 females, 52.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids-induced ferroptosis suppresses pancreatic cancer growth.

Despite recent advances in science and medical technology, pancreatic cancer remains associated with high mortality rates due to aggressive growth and no early clinical sign as well as the unique resistance to anti-cancer chemotherapy. Current numerous investigations have suggested that ferroptosis, which is a programed cell death driven by lipid oxidation, is an attractive therapeutic in different tumor types including pancreatic cancer. Here, we first demonstrated that linoleic acid (LA) and α-linolenic acid (αLA) induced cell death with necroptotic morphological change in MIA-Paca2 and Suit 2 cell lines.

Duodenal neuroendocrine tumor after bilateral breast cancer with type 1 neurofibromatosis: a case report.

Background: Young women with NF1 are at a high risk of developing breast cancer. Although they are at risk for abdominal tumors, such as gastrointestinal stromal tumors and neuroendocrine tumors, follow-up strategies for other tumors after breast cancer have not yet been established. Here, we present a case of duodenal neuroendocrine tumor found during follow-up after bilateral mastectomy for breast cancer with type 1 neurofibromatosis (NF1), for which pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) and lymphadenectomy were performed.